transformations [something poetic]
Erin Hallyburton, Charlotte Simpson, Mitchel Davis, Jemima Lucas, James Carey, Bridie Lunney
6–23 May 2022
transformations [something poetic] is the inaugural collaborative exhibition from galleries Blindside (Naarm) and Lilac City (Cadi, Djubuguli), bringing together artists Jemima Lucas, Erin Hallyburton, Mitchel Davis, Charlotte Simpson, James Carey, and Bridie Lunney.
transformations [something poetic] is a collection of works situated in material and spatial flows; interrupting and transforming forces that cooperatively vibrate and resonate. These are works that amplify vulnerabilities, the hidden and overlooked becoming an intensification of movements and charge.
don’t forget the [something poetic]
~
Oyster - Unthinkable, abject, unliveable bodies
Shells formed from calciums and carbonates, drifting on the ebb and flow
Seized in the fine slick of their gills
Compounds hardening,
formed to protect vulnerable flesh
They rely on nothing but waste and their own sex Fucking themselves into existence
Over and over
Primitive prolificacy
Do they act in servitude to the ocean? Or in symbiosis
What purpose if not filtering specs of shit
Caught in their mucus
To then be swilled and slurped by foreign mucus where they’re digested and expelled. Faeces then pumped back into the ocean
The calcium of which is then to be feasted on
What comes of gills when petrified in aluminium? Another entity serving as support to a greater structure
Its heart may have stopped beating when evaporated
Clad in scoria
But did it feel anything?
Do violent actions inflicted on one without a nervous system begin to be nonviolent?
For surely bodies live and die; eat and sleep; feel pain, pleasure;
endure illness and violence
Will the memory of the shucking
The evaporation,
The petrification - Begin to register on your nervous system?
Unthinkable, abject, unliveable bodies.
Jemima Lucas, 2022
Featured image Jemima Lucas, Tell me what you are. Will you hold me in your arms? 2021. Stripped trampoline, cast latex, aluminium oyster, eyelets, tempered mild steel spiked hooks. Courtesy the artist.
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday 12-5pm
Suite 4, 103-105 Oxford Street Darlinghurst, Sydney N.S.W
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Erin Hallyburton is an artist and researcher who lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne). Her sculptural practice engages with fat studies and intersectional theory in order to examine the conceptual and material limits of the body, and how these limits manifest in certain sites. Edible and transforming materials enact ongoing processes with the gallery space, highlighting the viscosity of architectural and hierarchal structures that are presented as neutral and static. Hallyburton is completing her Master of Fine Art candidature at Monash University.
Charlotte Simpson works primarily through a sculptural practice, with works having a material focus on discarded objects and site. Their practice returns to ideas of architecture retaining multiple durations, exploring the relationship between architecture and human as co-dependent. Works are often found through the act of installation, directly responding to site. The symbiotic and temporal relationship between the object and site is where the work lies. Charlotte is currently completing a Master of Fine Art at National Art School.
Mitchel DavisThrough a careful re-contextualisation of found objects Mitchel Davis transforms the meaning and perception towards the materiality of his work.Interested in the intersection between mediums, he combines elements of painting, sculpture and textiles in his practice to explore themes of identity and masculinity. Mitchel Davis is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture at National Art School, Gadigal/Bidjigal (Sydney).
Jemima Lucas investigates productive powers between psychological and
materially opposed gestures of control and release/power and
agency. The material assemblages hold allegorical potential, situating
the works as active conduits for the body. Through balanced
expressions of perpetration and yield, antithetical forces negotiate their
impact on one another.
James Carey is an artist and lecturer in Interior Design, School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University, and is an artistic director at BLINDSIDE Gallery in Naarm / Melbourne. James’ creative research practice is process-based, having inherent curiosities to notions of duration, labour, maintenance and value in contemporary cultures and societies.
Bridie Lunney Bridie Lunney develops her works in relation to the site of presentation, engaging the given context, physical conditions, and poetics. Combining practices of architectural interventions, sculpture, and durational performance, Lunney acknowledges the body as a conduit between our psychological selves and the physical world. She has exhibited extensively including at the TarraWarra Biennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Artspace and Performance Space. She has been an artist in residence and exhibited in Chile, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.She is currently a Lecturer in Sculpture at the National Art School, Sydney, and an Advisor to Blindside gallery, Melbourne.
James Carey is an artist and lecturer in Interior Design, School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University, and is an artistic director at BLINDSIDE Gallery in Naarm / Melbourne. James’ creative research practice is process-based, having inherent curiosities to notions of duration, labour, maintenance and value in contemporary cultures and societies.
Bridie Lunney Bridie Lunney develops her works in relation to the site of presentation, engaging the given context, physical conditions, and poetics. Combining practices of architectural interventions, sculpture, and durational performance, Lunney acknowledges the body as a conduit between our psychological selves and the physical world. She has exhibited extensively including at the TarraWarra Biennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Artspace and Performance Space. She has been an artist in residence and exhibited in Chile, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.She is currently a Lecturer in Sculpture at the National Art School, Sydney, and an Advisor to Blindside gallery, Melbourne.
